i'm andrea mitchell live in denver where mitt romney took the fight to president obama in wednesday's debate. last night it was the president who often seemed remote and disengaged. joining me now on the phone from the president's speech that he's just had in denver is chuck todd, of course, traveling with the president. chuck, what's the explanation from team obama as to how ill prepared the president seemed to be for this? i think chuck todd is with the president. i guess they've just taken off. we're joined now for our daily fix with chris cillizza, msnbc contributor and managing edter of post politics.com and ruth marcus and politico editor in chief, john harris. chris, first to you. your scoring of the debate and what you think the president's strategy was or wasn't going in. >> i don't know what his strategy was, but whatever it was, it wasn't particularly good, andrea. you know, the thing that i was struck by the whole time is optics matter. this is television. how you look, how you present yourself matters. barack obama, honestly, kind of looked like he would have rather have